


Don't Leave

by TWDObsessive



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Best Friends, Depressed!Rick, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fights, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Love Confessions, M/M, angry!Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:56:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22888129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TWDObsessive/pseuds/TWDObsessive
Summary: Rick does something terrible and it pisses Daryl off.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Comments: 24
Kudos: 138





	Don't Leave

I was pissed. Ain’t nobody need to question it, cause when a Dixon is pissed...he makes it known. I burst through the prison doors and felt bad when Carol jumped back about ten feet at the sudden sound. “Where’s Rick?” I growled.

“Look, Daryl...” Glenn started to say as he unwisely walked closer to me.

I stopped in my tracks and gave him a look that needed no words and tried not to smile at the way he raised his hands in surrender and stepped back. “He’s up in his cell with Hershel. He’s fine and…”

“Rick?” I growled as I took the prison steps two at a time. “Where you at, ya prick?”

Hershel stepped out of the cell at the sound of my voice. “Daryl, we need to let him rest a bit. This isn’t something that your temper can fix.”

“Out of my way, old man,” I growled, immediately feeling guilty about it. “I just need some time to talk to him,” I said a little more gently. Well, as gently as a Dixon could manage under the circumstances. 

Just like Glenn, Hershel raised his hands in surrender and made room for me to enter. Rick was lying in his bunk, one hand over his eyes to hide the light. I pulled him out of bed by his collar and pushed him up against the concrete wall. 

“Daryl, he’s still unsteady,” Maggie said as she suddenly appeared next to her father. 

“Rick? You hearin’ me?” I yelled.

He mumbled something unintelligible as he struggled to stand. “You got a _son_! You got a goddamn baby _daughter_! I don’t care how fucking depressed you are over Lori, you don’t got the right to opt out. Not on my damn watch.” I glanced down at two empty bottles of pills that still lay on the prison cell floor and I pushed him back over to the bed where Hershel quickly rushed to help him lie down. 

“You ain’t worth talking to like this,” I spat. “You get yourself alert and awake and we _will_ have a long conversation.” 

“I’m sorry, Daryl,” he said in a bit of a slur.

“Not as sorry as you're gonna be,” I yelled and burst through the group that had all circled around the cell door. “Someone come get me when he’s done being drugged out. I’m goin’ outside to kill stuff.”

I spotted Carl sitting at the end of the hall, keeping his distance from all the excitement. “You,” I said as I pointed to him. “You’re coming with me.” As he stood, I put a comforting hand on his shoulder. No kid should have to see his parents die. He’d already been there with his mama, ain’t no way I was gonna let him lose his daddy, too.”

“Where are we going?” he asked as we walked together to the front doors. “We’re going to misplace our anger onto some walkers.” I looked at him and I could see the fire in his eyes. He wanted to yell at his old man as much as I did. 

“Okay,” he answered. “But Dad probably wouldn’t like me using the gun and…”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what your old man would like right now,” I snarled as I handed the boy a spare pistol.

We walked down to the prison gates and let ourselves out, Carl just a few steps behind me the whole time.

There were only about twenty-some a’ them rotters mopin’ around out there. Let the kid take out two or three and I handled the rest, mostly with my knife. Punched one on the face. Okay, punched five. Course it didn’t do any good and I still had to stab them, but it was worth it to let out my aggression.

As we stood there surrounded by a pile of twice-dead corpses, Carl squinted up at me. “Why you think he did it? Think he’s just gotten weak and can’t take the fight anymore?” 

Kid was trying to be brave, standing taller than his natural stance and holding his chin high.

I walked back to the fence and sat down against it, motioning for him to sit his ass down, too.

“He ain’t weak. He just wasn’t thinking.”

“What would have happened? Like to me. If he’d have died?”

The kid’s innocence broke my damn heart. Just a damn kid and having to live through this hell. “He ain’t goin nowhere,” I mumbled. 

“But what if…”

“I’m here, Carl. I’ll always be here to take care of ya. And so will your dad.”

“Can you teach me to shoot a bow?”

“When your arms get longer,” I said as I stood. “Need you to take care of lil’ asskicker tonight while me and your dad have a discussion.”

I walked back to the prison and Carl followed behind me. “What are you gonna do?”

“Kick his ass mostly. And give him and earful ‘bout doing stupid shit that he ain’t gonna forget.”

“I got something I better tell you, Daryl,” the kid said. I turn and look at him.

“He’s been doing stupid shit even before the apocalypse.”

I started to actually laugh, not something I often find myself doing. “Somehow that don’t surprise me.”

My laugh got an actual smile on the kid’s face. Don’t think I seen one of those since the farm. 

As we walked up to the prison doors Carl continued. “Like one time he was trying to get all the fishing gear down from the attic and he got one of the old hooks caught on a sleeve and by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs he was wrapped up so tight in fishing wire that mom hadda cut him out of it with scissors.

Sadly, I could totally picture it. “Yeah, that tracks,” I said with a laugh.

“Another time he decided to catch a mouse that was in the back of one of our cabinets with his bare hand and when he got it, the mouse bit him and he threw it up in the air and it almost landed on me.” Carl was laughing now and the sound of it calmed my frayed nerves a bit. “Also, it peed while it was in the air.”

I put an arm on his shoulder. “You’re going to be alright, Carl. You’re strong -- body and mind.”

“Is he gonna be okay, though?” Carl asked, motioning to the stairwell leading to Rick’s cell. 

“Yes. As soon as I kick his ass. And I think I can take him since he lost to a mouse.”

Glenn called Carl over to a table where a few of them were playing cards. He looked back at me before he walked away. “Thanks for making me feel better.”

“Anytime, kid,” I said and I took the steps two at a time again.

Rick was alone in his room and when I walked in his eyes shot over to me.

“I know,” he said before I could say a word. “I fucked up and I know…”

“Not here,” I growled and walked out of his cell, hearing him following on my heels as I headed down to the tombs. He didn’t try talking again until we got down into one of the lower rooms, an electrical room or something, and I turned towards him and folded my arms.

“Daryl, I fucked up. I know. I just...you know how I was seeing Lori. She was haunting me...fucking me up and then I started worrying so much about doing the wrong thing and…and...I just wanted to make it go away for a little while. I didn’t meant to..I wasn’t trying to...”

I took two steps towards him, curled my fingers into a fist, and punched him in the jaw, knocking him onto the floor. He looked up at me, shocked, as if he didn’t know that’s how Dixons handled shit. 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how Lori’s goddamn ghost has fucked you up. You think I ain’t got no ghosts?”

Rick licked at his bloodied lip and stood up. “I deserved that.”

“No shit,” I said.

He leaned against a work table and I gave him time to think about what he wanted to say.

“Is Carl okay? Judith?”

“Well, he thinks you're a dumbass, but he’s fine. And luckily Judith ain’t old enough to know what you just pulled. You know who ain’t alright, though?”

“Who?” he asked as I walked closer to him. 

“Me, Goddamnit. Close as we got these months, hell probably years by now? And you're just gonna leave everyone? Your kids? This family you done put together? Me?” I asked.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said as he grabbed my arm, looking into my eyes like he was swearin’ a promise to God himself. His eyes were so fucking blue, so fucking laser focused into mine, like I was all there was in the whole goddamn world and nobody _ever_ looked at me like that before. 

“Well you did,” I said with a sneer as I pushed him against the wall. I was still furious. Relieved that he was up and walking and talking sense finally. But goddamnit. I just felt this urge to punch him again.

“I need you,” he said, looking at me with that way he had. Fierce, sincere. “I can’t do any of this without you.”

“Fuck you can’t,” I spat out. “Something happens to me? Huntin’ one day or some shit...you still have fucking _kids_ that need you and you will bury me and stand back up and survive to take care of them. 

His eyes had filled with tears and a fat drop finally fell and ran a trail down his cheek.

“Don’t talk like that,” he said, attempting to sound much stronger than I knew he felt. He walked closer and pushed me to the wall, getting into my face. “Don’t…” he said, letting the sentence die as his face was close enough to mine that I could feel his breath against my lips.

He leaned his forehead against mine and I pulled him into a hug. “You ain’t gonna pull a stunt like that again, you hear me?” I whispered into his ear, feeling him nod against my shoulder. 

“I need you,” he whimpered again.

“Said I’s here. What are you, deaf?” 

And before I knew it, his mouth covered mine and when I gasped at the surprise he slotted his lips to mine, his fingers tangling in my hair, and I ain’t gonna lie...I did not see that coming. Had I thought about it? Well, yeah. Quite a bit, actually. Did I want it? Well, fuck yes. But did I ever think Rick Grimes would be gripping onto me for dear life and kissing the breath out of me? No. it hadn’t crossed my mind.

I put my hands on his hips cause I didn’t know where the shit else to put ‘em. Ain’t never been kissed like that before. Truth be told, ain’t never been kissed at all. I liked it. Liked the closeness, the intimacy, the tickle of his whiskers against my skin. 

When he finally pulled away, he kept his eyes on mine waiting for my reaction; his eyes still glassy from tears, and his hair a mess of unbrushed curls. 

“Aren’t you gonna say anything?” he finally asked.

“Like what?” I asked. I did have about three million questions, but just couldn’t figure out how to narrow them down to one. And really the only thing I could think to do was pull him back to me and kiss him gently, my hands hugging him close to me, trying my best to let him know everything was going to be okay.

When I pulled away he grabbed at one of my hands and held it. “Can this...can this be a thing? You and me?”

“You and me have always been a thing, Rick,” I told him. “But you gotta promise me somethin’.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t do anything fucking stupid again.”

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Rick said as he winced.

“What?”

“I’ve been doing stupid shit even before the apocalypse. This one time, there was a mouse…”

I couldn’t help but smile and it surprised me because when I heard what this dumbass did with those pills I didn’t ever think I’d be able to smile again. 

“I already know you're an idiot. I mean don’t do anything _that_ stupid again,” I said as I motioned towards C Block, the scene of his crime.

“I promise,” Rick said. And I believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to stretch my legs with this one shot in an attempt to get my ass moving. I have to finish several WIPs that are sitting in my google docs! I'm thinking about starting to post one even though it's not finished. Maybe having it out there will encourage me to write faster? Thoughts?


End file.
